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By SCOTT C. TRUVER

Dr. Scott C. Truver is executive director of the Center for Security Strategies and Operations, Techmatics Division of Anteon Corporation, Arlington, Va.

"We are developing advanced Naval Surface Fire Support [NSFS] and long-range strike-warfare systems to meet the daunting operational maneuver requirements of the 21st century," Rear Adm. Michael D. Mullen, director of the Surface Warfare Division in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV), noted during a recent briefing.

"A critical need is to address the Marine Corps' Operational Maneuver from the Sea [OMFTS] and Ship-To-Objective Maneuver [STOM] concepts," Mullen continued. Other emerging requirements call for longer-range precision-strike weapons--which, coupled with NSFS weapons, comprise the surface Navy's multidimensional land-attack warfare capability.

Faced with several land-attack initiatives and other programs competing for scarce dollars, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jay L. Johnson decided--in an action paper dated 16 April 1998--to scale down the Navy's multitrack approach to permit the following:

• Continue the development, procurement, and installation of the Extended-Ranged Guided Munition (ERGM), the 5-inch/62-caliber Mk45 Mod 4 gun mount, and the vertical gun for advanced ships (VGAS, now subsumed within the broader AGS (advanced gun system) program);
• Proceed with development and procurement of the Land-Attack Standard Missile (LASM) for Aegis warships; and
• Defer a decision--pending further development of competing missile systems--on the next-generation Advanced Land-Attack Missile (dubbed "ALAM") for the DD-21 Land-Attack Destroyer.

A Primary Focus On Operational Requirements

The needs are compelling, and for that reason OPNAV is "reshaping the surface Navy to provide broader and more responsive capabilities to influence events ashore," explained Capt. Kevin Quinn, head of the Surface Warfare Division's Land-Attack Warfare Branch. "Responsive long-range gun and missile systems are being developed and will be back-fitted into Aegis cruisers and destroyers," Quinn noted. Beyond these important near-term surface warship programs, he said, "the DD-21 Land-Attack Destroyer, delivered toward the end of the next decade, will usher in a dramatic sea change in the surface Navy's ability to reach out farther than ever before, and with much greater accuracy and precision, to 'touch' our adversaries in future crises and conflicts."

"We are developing advanced NSFS systems to satisfy Marine Corps requirements for naval fires in support of the OMFTS and STOM operational concepts," Mullen said. "These concepts envision amphibious assaults launched from over the horizon, nominally 25 nautical miles [nm] off the coast, with rapid insertion of troops across the shoreline." The operational requirements for NSFS were outlined in a 3 December 1996 memo signed by Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, then commanding general of the Marine Corps' Combat Development Command, who established a threshold range of 41 nm and an objective range of 63 nm.

The opening argument assumes that surface combatants are providing over-the-horizon fire support from 25 nm off the beach. "As the Marines cross the beach," Quinn explained, "they need fires at least to the range of their organic artillery, which has a range of 16 nautical miles. Add 16 miles to the 25-mile standoff distance, and you get the threshold range requirement of 41 nautical miles." Marines also need to be able to operate up to 16 miles inland in areas such as helicopter landing zones, and while doing so need counter-fires against enemy artillery, which has a range of 22 miles. "Add 22 to 41," he said, "and you get the near-term range requirement of 63 nautical miles."

But the 2010 NSFS concept envisions even greater range requirements. "With the introduction of the MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft into the fleet, the Marines will be conducting STOM missions out to 200 nautical miles," Mullen stated. "In that regime, they will not have organic artillery and will have to rely on long-range, responsive, accurate, and lethal fire support from Navy ships. So the full range requirement is 200 nautical miles."

With these needs in mind, the primary near-term challenge facing the Navy and Marine Corps today is the limited range of the existing Mk45 5-inch/54-caliber naval guns that are the surface Navy's NSFS mainstay, but which are incapable of NSFS tasks in support of the new operational concepts. Their maximum ballistic range is not quite 13 nm and accuracy at ranges greater than nine nm is an uncertain proposition--approximately 400 meters CEP (circle error probable)--according to naval gunners. Moreover: (a) the current guns cannot support rapid-maneuver units ashore; and (b) their killing power--a total projectile weight of just 70 pounds--is insufficient to destroy or at least neutralize heavily armored, fortified, or buried targets.

The Navy's Surface Warfare community is in general agreement in this regard. "In warfighting terms," Mullen noted, "maritime support of land forces requires [that] immediate, sustainable combat power be available to halt further enemy invasion while also enabling the rapid deployment, sustainment, and defense of U.S., allied, and coalition forces, afloat and ashore." Tying all of this together, he said, will be an advanced fire-control system and other systems based on still-emerging "network-centric warfare" concepts.

Following is a brief review of some of the more important near- and long-term initiatives the Navy is now pursuing:

• NFCS. Today's NSFS planning and coordination systems are the focus of several far-reaching initiatives--"Ring of Fire," "Network Centric Warfare," and the advanced Naval Fires Control Systems (NFCS)--designed to significantly enhance current supporting fires mission planning, command-and-
  control, and coordination, which are largely manual operations.

"As we develop ... longer-range fires support weapons," Quinn acknowledged, "we can no longer conduct fire missions using the manual techniques of the past. ... [For that reason] we are developing NFCS to automate shipboard coordinated fires functions in a network-centric environment."

Because ownership costs are a major concern, NFCS is being designed to reduce NSFS manning requirements in the Combat Information Center from today's 10 people down to two. The advanced system will be used for both mission planning and execution. For mission planning it will process call-for-fire requests, define target sets, pair targets to specific weapons systems, coordinate engagements, and deconflict fires. During the execution phase, it will manage engagement schedules, issue firing orders, and send firing reports to the tasking command. It also will monitor weapon inventories and control launches, and will be fully interoperable with the Army's Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Direction System (AFATDS).

The system, scheduled to reach initial operational capability (IOC) in 2003, will be installed in the Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81) and later Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided-missile destroyers; it also will be an element of the Cruiser Conversion Program for the 22 (CG-47) Ticonderoga-class Aegis guided-missile cruisers (CGs) fitted with the Mk41 Vertical Launching System (VLS).

• Land-Attack Standard Missile. The Navy decided, in the spring of 1998, to develop the Land-Attack Standard Missile, a variant of the Navy's Standard (SM-2) surface-to-air missile. That decision proved controversial, partly because an earlier joint surface/submarine warfare initiative had evaluated modification of the Army's Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) for vertical launch from surface warships and attack submarines. The CNO's decision to forgo the so-called "NTACMS" initiative was reviewed and ultimately approved by the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology in an 11 May 1999 memorandum. The Navy determined that the LASM alternative offers comparable capabilities in range and lethality, and could be in the fleet at less than half the total research, development, and acquisition cost of the NTACMS. A total buy of 800 LASMs is planned, at a unit cost of approximately $200,000.

"We are going to modify our older Standard missiles to the LASM configuration," Quinn explained, "by replacing the SM-2's AAW [anti-air warfare] guidance section, RF [radio-frequency] seeker, target detection device, and associated AAW flight software with an antijam GPS/INS [Global Positioning System/Inertial Navigation System] guidance package, LASM-unique software, and a height of burst sensor" in the existing supersonic missile. Navy plans also show that, with slight modifications, the SM-2's Mk125 blast-fragmentation warhead will be particularly lethal in antimaterial and antipersonnel roles.

The LASM flight demonstration program actually began in 1996. "We conducted the first LASM flight demo on 21 November 1997, and had two highly successful follow-on flight demonstrations in 1998 at the White Sands Missile Range," Quinn said, "as well as two warhead arena tests." With ranges out to 150 nm and a CEP of about 20 meters, the "fire-and-forget" LASM, he said, "will provide accurate, responsive, and lethal fires in direct support of forces on land."

The LASM is scheduled to reach IOC in fiscal year 2003, initially in the Burke-class destroyers (DDG 81 and later ships) and the Ticonderoga-class VLS cruisers.

• 5-inch/62-Caliber Gun. The Navy also has been pursuing a 62-caliber upgrade of the venerable Mk45 Mod 2 5-inch/54-caliber naval gun to enable the firing of the EX-171 ERGM, which will satisfy the fleet's near-term needs. About 80 percent of the new gun is common to the existing weapon. A new enclosure, shaped to minimize the radar cross-section, will weigh about 10 percent more than the current mount. Using conventional 5-inch ammunition, the new mount is expected to be able to fire 20 rounds per minute (rpm), dropping to 10 rpm of advanced munitions, such as the ERGM. Magazine capacity will be somewhat less than that available for current weapons--230 ERGMs and 230 conventional rounds, compared to the notional 600 conventional-round loadout in the 5-inch/54--but the precision-attack capability of the ERGM will make up for the diminished number of rounds.

United Defense L.P. delivered a proof-of-concept firing assembly to the Navy in the spring of 1998 for use in testing the system's ability to fire ERGMs. "We have fired hundreds of rounds at Dahlgren since then," Quinn noted, "and the gun is performing up to our expectations."

All future Aegis DDGs, beginning with the Winston S. Churchill--to be commissioned in 2001--will be built with the 5-inch/62 gun and the NSFS Warfare Control System. "The first gun for DDG 81 has already been delivered," Quinn noted; the guns for the Aegis cruisers, he said, will be backfitted as part of the Cruiser Conversion Program.

• Extended-Range Guided Munition. The ERGM round, currently under development, uses a greater propellant charge and a rocket motor-powered projectile to achieve ranges out to 63 nm. The aerodynamic projectile is five inches in diameter, five feet in length, and weighs 110 pounds, and will use a coupled GPS/INS guidance unit for jamming immunity. The prototype ERGM round was successfully tested in April 1997, and testing has continued on schedule to meet a planned 2002 IOC. Low-rate initial production of 500 rounds will begin in fiscal year 2000.

The ERGM is armed with 72 dual-purpose (antimaterial/antipersonnel) M80 submunitions. The M80, developed by the U.S. Army, is fitted with both a shaped charge, which can penetrate some three inches of armor, and enhanced fragmentation. In a combat situation, the ERGM's submunitions will be uniformly dispensed within a predetermined area that depends upon the specific target set to be attacked. The altitude at which the submunitions are dispensed can be preselected at heights ranging from 250 to 400 meters above the target, for five selectable dispensing diameters: 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 meters.

• Tomahawk. The Tomahawk Land-Attack (cruise) Missile (TLAM, BGM-109) is today the Navy's primary ship-launched precision strike weapon, and has been the service's principal "weapon of choice" in numerous crises since first being fired in anger during the air-war phase of Desert Storm in 1991. "During the past 18 months," Quinn confirmed, "the day-to-day demand for Tomahawks has risen considerably and put a strain on our ability to sustain Tomahawks at sea." Since January 1991, the Navy has fired some 1,000 TLAMs--400 between 1991 and the end of 1997 and 600 in the past 18 months.

Earlier, Vice Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, deputy chief of naval operations for plans, policies, and operations (recently nominated for a fourth star and duty as commander in chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet), noted that one "major lesson" learned from the December 1998 Operation Desert Fox strikes is the importance of properly managing TLAMs. "You have only so many TLAMs, and they are relatively expensive weapons," he said, "so you ... [have] to make sure that the unified CINCs [commanders in chief] are ready and willing to employ manned tactical aircraft to sustain the attack."

Production of the Block III TLAMs (which added GPS to the weapon's standard inertial and Digital Scene Matching navigation systems) stopped in 1998, when the decision was made to begin development and production of the Tactical Tomahawk variant. A lower-cost missile with an uprated range and guidance capability (including the ability to loiter over a target area and/or be retargeted in flight), the Tactical Tomahawk will be fitted with a new 1,000-pound warhead and an advanced penetrator with about twice the capability of the current Block IIIC weapon, and is likely, therefore, to be in even greater demand in future times of crisis than its Block III predecessor.

"We will have the ability to load more than one mission aboard the Tactical TLAM, a primary and one or more secondary missions, and then direct the missile in flight," Quinn noted--"what we are calling 'en-route flex.'" He said that the "TacTom," which is scheduled for a 2003 IOC, will have greater range (1,300­1,600 nautical miles at altitude) than the Block III, will be fitted with a missile-mounted camera (for Battle Damage Indication Imagery (BDII) via satellite link), and will have an on-board GPS mission-planning capability that will permit the planning and execution of strike missions against emergent battlefield targets.

The increasing demand for TLAMs has created certain concerns within the Navy's submarine force, particularly when the decision was made to use the LASM rather than NTACMS for near-term strike warfare missile upgrades. Vice Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr., commander, Submarine Force, Atlantic, recommended--in a 3 June 1999 letter to Rear Adm. Malcom I. Fages, director of submarine warfare in OPNAV--tailoring the submarine TLAM inventory for both vertical-cell launch system (CLS) and torpedo-tube launch (TTL) capability and reconsidering the transfer of TTL Block IID TLAMs to the surface force. "Fundamental to this recommendation is the fact that Tactical Tomahawk will provide no TTL capability," Giambastiani said. "With no program on the horizon for replacing [TTL] missiles, it is vital that the submarine force husband these resources carefully." Not to do so, he continued, "puts at risk the strike-warfare capability of all non-CLS-capable 688s [Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs)] as well as the Seawolf [SSN-21] class, while simultaneously limiting the 'punch' of our Improved Los Angeles-class and Virginia-class submarines." The relevance of those recommendations is underscored by current projections, which show that the SSN-688s and the three SSN-21 submarines will comprise as much as 70 percent of the submarine force in 2010.

Giambastiani recommended continuing to upgrade all submarine TLAMs to the Block III configuration (and conversion to TTL in the long term). "Tactical Tomahawk would then be used as our only vertical-launch missile, allowing conversion of all CLS Block IIs and IIIs to TTL," he concluded. "Following this strategy would afford a clear bridge to the next-generation missile for TTL capability."

• Advanced Gun System (AGS). The AGS is a developmental system for the future 32-ship DD-21 Land-Attack Destroyer program. "You may have heard of this gun referred to as 'VGAS'--the Vertical Gun for Advanced Ships," Quinn said, "but the program is also investigating a conventional pointing/trainable gun in a low-observable configuration." Indeed, in early July 1999 the trainable AGS seemed to have won out in the analysis of alternatives, partly because the VGAS could not fire unguided conventional rounds, and partly because the trainable mount is considered, according to Quinn, to be much more suitable for "surface dominance" tasks.

The pointing gun provides consistently superior offensive and defensive capabilities for land-attack as well as surface missions. Moreover, its other characteristics--e.g., reliability, signature, and cost--seem to be comparable to those of the vertical gun; it also appears to be safer and to have greater growth potential.

Another critical factor: The VGAS configuration would not have met the 100-nm range requirement, and its projectiles would take as much as 60 percent longer to reach their targets. A final decision on the program is expected by mid-November. IOC is slated for fiscal year 2009; when all systems are fielded, the Navy will have 64 to 128 "artillery battery equivalencies" at sea to support Marine Corps operations.

The gun will be at least 155mm, Quinn said, "and will be serviced by a fully automated ammunition-handling system. There will be at least two of these guns on each DD-21, capable of providing a sustained rate of fire of up to 12 rounds per minute per barrel. The system will have a large magazine capacity of 750 rounds per gun, and ranges out to 100 nautical miles." A 155mm gun would provide the opportunity for some component compatibility with Army 155mm rounds, including the Army's more advanced guided rounds now under development. That would allow the Navy to leverage the Army R&D investment and, because of the anticipated high production rates required by the Army, lower its own production costs.

"As we develop this gun," Quinn said, "we also will leverage our five-inch ERGM program, the Army's XM982 program for a 155mm GPS/INS-guided projectile, several Navy Advanced Technology Demonstrations, and Army payload programs, such as the Search-and-Destroy Armor [SADARM] program. ... We also will leverage the automated ammo-handling technology of the Army's Crusader self-propelled howitzer program."

• Advanced Land-Attack Missile. H. Lee Buchanan III, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development, and acquisition, and Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, deputy chief of naval operations for resources, warfare requirements, and assessments (N8), said in a 14 June 1999 action memorandum that the Navy's "plan for ALAM" is centered on "an aggressive, multiteam industry competition to develop a full-capability land-attack missile, taking full advantage of the revolution in business affairs."

In the Navy's view, LASM provides a "good initial capability," but there is still a compelling need to "infuse commercial technology and open-design principles to produce a more capable missile system for the future, with a low production cost." This approach, the memo said, "could lead to redesign of a current missile, as was done in Tactical Tomahawk, or new designs."

Although the memo focused on DD-21 as a primary ALAM user, attack submarines are clearly figuring in the Navy's plans for an affordable, long-range (beyond 200 nm), jam-resistant, precision-guided weapon. Both unitary and submunition warheads will be evaluated for anti-armor (including moving targets), bunkered targets,and antimaterial/antipersonnel applications. Industry competition would begin in FY 2001, according to Buchanan and Lautenbacher, at a funding level of perhaps $10 million to $15 million per team, "with adequate resources in FY 2003 and beyond to develop or deploy the selected systems in adequate quantities."

Staying the Course ...

As the preceding suggests, there are numerous and varied solutions at hand or in the pipeline to provide the capabilities required, and to create what Mullen has called "an offensive naval force that conducts precision land attack, a force that accurately and precisely delivers timely ordnance in direct support of the land battle--anytime, anywhere--as a key element of joint, allied, and coalition forces." Surface Warfare's real renaissance in land-attack warfare will most likely come, therefore, from a family of complementary fire support and strike weapon systems that--with the commitment of stable and long-term funding--will meet the 21st century requirements of the Marine Corps and other U.S. and allied ground forces. 

Offensive, Responsive, and Flexible